There is something to be said for a legislative process which, even in what many have categorically proclaimed to be the most bitterly rancorous, partisan year in living memory, still manages now and then to churn out legislation which tackles major issues and does so in a bi-partisan manner. One such effort is Senate Bill 18-003, sponsored by Senator Ray Scott and Representatives Chris Hansen and Jon Becker, which resuscitated the floundering Colorado Energy Office, and made it a better agency in the process.

What SB -003 does is to essentially de-politicize the office, to the extent that is possible. That is a remarkable feat, and to be sure there is enough in the bill to irritate the flanks of both parties, which is generally a promising indication that it could prove workable.

The re-focused Energy Office alights on the question of whether “all-the-above” is merely a prosaic cliché or actually meaningful. The bill realigns the agency from being merely a vehicle for the advancement of an agenda – the official promotion of “wind, solar, or nothing” – towards something more viable and realistic, which seeks solutions to the problem of how to meet current and future energy demands, free of ideological baggage.

The bill recognizes several realities:

SB 003 does several other things – for instance, reducing or eliminating a number of nice-sounding but obsolete and unused pet programs, and requiring that the Office’s budget be reviewed by the legislature annually – but its signal achievement is the repurposing of the Energy Office from being merely a flagship for the energy fad of the moment into being a useful tool for honestly and comprehensively informing the state’s energy policy into the future.